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Arcade
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Post by Arcade »

I tend to think of “Secret rings” as an easier version of “Segasonic the Hedgehog”, if you think the game that way, is not bad and you fell ashamed for sucking at using the wiimote.

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FlashTHD
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Post by FlashTHD »

Ngangbius wrote:
FlashTHD wrote: And...what has that got to do with my question?
That they are probably tired of the Sonic shit, maybe moreso that the Western audience?
Whichever, there's got to be some fans, right?

I spent 20 minutes with Wildfire back in March, my full impressions here. I still want to play it again to get a better POV, once I have a Wii, but I would have to buy it. Not until it's $20 or under and, again, I find a used copy so that i'm not giving Sega an inch. (Well, I think that's how it works...)

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Post by Opa-Opa »

Arcade wrote:I tend to think of “Secret ringsâ€￾ as an easier version of "Segasonic the Hedgehog"
Wow. You just solved this game.

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Isuka
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Post by Isuka »

Uhm well, I just read in the Sonic 3D page that each first and second act of every zone is subdivided in 2 areas or boards, with five enemies/ flickies. This is true for the first act of Green Grove Zone, for any other there are three areas, thus totaling fifteen enemies/ flickies.

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Post by Tsuyoshi-kun »

Now that the site is up to date, I guess I should tell you that Sonic Mega Collection Plus was released in North America. Here's a link to the U.S. box art here:

http://www.amazon.com/Sega-Sonic-Mega-C ... B000ML8D5Q

Also, Sonic Adventure DX for the PC was released in North America through Activision and in Europe through Mastertronic (who release many of Sega's PC games in Europe). Put your mouse over the customer images to see the U.S. box art:

http://www.amazon.com/SONIC-ADVENTURE-D ... B000C9716A

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Post by Neo »

While discussing random things about the museum pages, I found it odd that there's no note in the Sonic Heroes page pointing out that Rail Canyon borrows its name from a Skypatrol level. I thought we were into these uninteresting tidbits.

Also pertaining to Skypatrol, the level boxes refer how the various graphics are borrowed from elsewhere, but it still misses a few obvious ones:

RailCanyon not only borrows the triangle motif from Palmtree Panic, as it uses Hill Top's pinetrees and (as portrayed in the fourth shot), the elevator structures from Oil Ocean.

While Ruin Wood's latter part features totally original and uninspired graphics, it's quite obvious that the first segment gets its shtick from Mystic Cave.

This might be more of a personal opinion, but I feel Metal Island's graphics not only copy Tidal Tempest's circle pattern, but it picks up a bit from Wing Fortress in terms of general idea and color pallete (gold and grey).

Finally, Dark Castle uses Casino Night graphics for the background and some level architecture, however it also uses Metropolis' for some 'inside' segments (portrayed in third picture)

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Post by Isuka »

Green Gibbon! wrote:Do they actually swear in the English dub of Shadow? 'Cause I remember "damn" gets tossed around alot in the subtitles.
Just remembered that I'm still quite shocked that they actually said "bitch" in Xenosaga II. Wasn't expecting that one.

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Post by Green Gibbon! »

Playing Secret Rings is like trying to drive a car with your feet: an ongoing exercise in artery-busting frustration to an end that could be accomplished much more easily through a more logical approach. The game requires precision and timing that are impossible due to the slow, unresponsive, and often counterintuitive controls. You basically end up slamming headlong into one obstacle after another hoping you've got enough Rings to survive the impact. Even if the mechanics worked, though, it would still be a boring game because the very concept is asinine.

Frankly, I think Sonic '06 is the superior game, and that's about the most brutal criticism I can dish out. I don't even like the music.

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Post by Isuka »

Driving with your feet surely sounds REVOLUTIONARY and INNOVATIVE.

This also made me wonder, how does SatSR or any other Wii game that requires the slightest amount of precision respond when you accidentally/ instinctively react to a determined situation, say, an unexpected explosion that will harm you, by veering away of it? It'll make you totally screw up, or is just about the same as tapping the analog stick and regaining control instantaneously?

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Post by gr4yJ4Y »

For me the controls became second nature after I used them for only a brief while. I only played the demo of Sonic 2k6, but I can tell you there's no way someone could think the controls for that are better than those in SatSR

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Post by Esrever »

Ngangbius wrote:Yeah, they swear a lot in the dub, and it makes the dialouge sound poorer than usual.

Now where's that DAMN fourth chaos emerald?


The only time I really had a problem with the controls in Secret Rings was in the first 40 minutes, before you earn the "upgrades" that (essentially) let Sonic steer properly and keep his running speed after landing a jump. Before that he controls like you are dragging him behind you by a long rope. That combined with the painfully boring and drawn out "Lost Oasis" tutorial stages had me fearing the absolute worst when I was first playing the game.

But once I got past that, I really started enjoying the game... both for the stages and for the controls. And I kept on enjoying myself right up until I had cleared all the game's fun levels and found myself left with only the more aggravating missions and challenges. Then I never played the game again.

I think all told there are four, maybe even five hours of gameplay in Secret Rings that are really fantastic. But the rest of it is excruciating. It's the biggest mixed bag the franchise has ever had.

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Post by Ngangbius »

A couple of weeks ago, I finally got to play with a Wii at one of my relative's house, and they happen to own Secret Rings.

For a brief moment, I had more fun with it than I did with the Sonic 2K6 demo. However, the control mechanism is kinda dodgy. I really not a fan of the charge jump and briefly shaking the Wiimote to do a homing attack is stupid.

Then I got to the first mission where I had to avoid hitting jars in order to get to the next level. After failing several times(whether missing the timing of the homing jumps or braking a lousy jar), I said 'screw it' and made it my goal to never to play this game again whenever I get a Wii on my own.

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Post by Frieza2000 »

It's been many a moon since I've attempted to make an intelligent post, but having just earned my S ranks and finding my observations about the game startlingly different than any I've read, I feel compelled.

To say the game is structurally similar to SA1 is accurate in that its progression is act, field, act, boss, act, minigame, etc, though to compare the games by this aspect is deceptive as it's an almost entirely superfluous element. While the game tries to masquerade as a successor to the Adventure series, and apparently succeeds with some, when the gameplay is examined it's obvious that it bears no more resemblance to the Adventure games than either Heroes or Shadow.

The game design continues the evolution begun with Heroes, where the focus is no longer running or jumping or even preforming tricks, but fighting. Increasingly we've seen segments where progress is suspended until you've killed everything in the area to open a door or a box. This and the introduction of enemy health, the designers surely realized, would make shorter levels seem longer and distract players from how monotonous and dull the platforming is. While Sonic has managed to retain more of a SA2 level of balance between these battles and speed, Shadow and Silver's episodes are essentially a series of rooms wherein a painfully familiar brood of baddies must be dispatched, connected by short hallways, light dash trails, springs, and other such boring means of advancement. Even Sonic's segments are severely hindered by groups of enemies that you simply can't run past, and don't want to run past if you're going for rank. In this sense, the game is less of a Sonic Adventure 3 and more of a Shadow the Hedgehog 2.

This design, while decidedly undesirable, is not unworkable. Slaughtering enemies can be a fun way to break up the running, as demonstrated by the GUN Base in ShTH. The battles in Sonic2k6, however, suck harder than any before them. Part of the problem is the shear number of enemies. There are at least a hundred per level, with an average of 3 hit points. But the failure is fully realized by the fact that you have no reliable means of attack that cannot be described as slow and tedious. Sonic is stuck with the homing attack, wherein you stick to an enemy and mash A until it goes away. Shadow was the closest to functional with his melee attacks, but this still only deals with 1 enemy at a time. Chaos Boost was almost his salvation, but even after you finally learn how to use it properly you can still find yourself at the end of a trail of fire birds with no jumps left and short trip straight down to look forward to. The move doesn't last long enough anyway. Silver could have at least been bearable had his telekineses been properly programmed. To their credit, they got the aiming down as good as I could expect. Unfortunately, they didn't do anything to prevent the first object you throw from being the one behind all of the others. This is especially bad when that item happens to be a missile you caught, blowing away all of your other items and rings. Even trying to throwing two items at close range is unreliable. In the later levels this pretty much forces you to run up to an enemy, use psychic shock, pick it up, and either make a failed attempt at hitting another enemy with it or drop it and move on to the next group. Silver's levels average about 10 minutes of this. I found myself longing for one of Shadow's machine guns.

The level design truly gave me an appreciation of just how much talent and soul went into <i>Heroes.</i> If you were able to remove the enemies and the constant fear of running off the side, you'd be left with some strikingly vacant worlds. While less linear than in recent years with the long overdue return of the high-road/low-road scheme, alternate routes are still few and quickly merge. The Kingdom Valley demo was as good as it got, where at one point you had a choice between 3 separate paths. Naturally they were putting their best foot forward and the rest of the game never lived up to the promise. Worse, level gimmicks are nominal. Examples are searchlights in White Acropolis, tilting scales in Radical Train, swinging vines in Tropical Jungle, and magnetic poles that kill enemies and (pointlessly) suck up metal balls when you touch them in Aquatic Base. Even ShTH was more interesting than that.

Believe it or not, the high speed sections are my favorite part. I hated them at first, but once you've memorized them it's a treat to finally get a sensation of speed from the game. If they'd been designed better, perhaps modeled more in the vein of the Sonic 3D Blast special stages, and the controls been more usable, this would've been the best idea they've had in years.

I've heard that in cinema the goal of the musicians is to compose music that blends into the scenes so well that viewers don't even notice it's playing. This is the complete opposite of the outstanding and memorable tunes we've come to expect as level themes in Sonic games, but apparently nobody informed the stock orchestra Sega hired of this. The background music achieves a level of white noise never approached by even the most generic of Senoue's contributions. It works wonderfully in the cut scenes - reminiscent of a Hollywood blockbuster, it can indeed evoke epic sensations - but it has no place elsewhere.

Much is made of the title's "mood." Maybe I didn't play it right or haven't let the experience sit long enough to settle into the vague nuances of memory, because I can't seem to assemble the varying elements into something coherent enough to call tonality, but there is one thing I'm sure I'll end up holding as iconic: Soleanna Castle Town. And when I think of Soleanna Castle Town, I think of gray. Gray roads, gray bridges, gray buildings - I could've sworn there was a gray sky but it's just a little cloudy. These memories seem contrary to the video's I'm looking at though, where it's more of a sun soaked port city. Do the clouds move and dynamically alter the lighting or something? Somehow I'll always remember this as a depressingly drab and lifeless city, which neither the relatively colorful New City nor the open plains of Soleanna Forest can paint over.

The story is what I imagine a modern day Sonic movie would be like, both visually and in the way the continuity was approached. The characterization is on target with the exceptions of Eggman, who's goofy villain style has been exchanged for a cliche would-be dictator (he only laughs ONCE the entire game!), and Rouge, who's entire concept of a treasure hunter obsessed with gems has given way to a gig as a government lapdog with much less of her original spunk. Even I have to admit it's the best story we've gotten in years, which isn't saying much, but there's still something terribly wrong with it. I struggled at first to find what it was, but I think it has to do with how sparse it is. And yet it's not sparse enough to aspire to the simplicity of the genesis games. So much goes by without anything really happening. For example, Sonic's sole motive, catch Eggman and repeatedly rescue a princess, should've presented the old feeling of constant progress toward a definitive goal. Instead the focus is constantly diverted by unnecessary sidequests, unfruitful encounters with requisite characters, and irrelevant trips through time that make it feel simultaneously bloated and empty. Shadow's story amounts to "I am Shadow the Hedgehog! GRR!" and serves only to both introduce and explain Mephiles, who's more of a plot device than a villain. Silver's ending was nice, but otherwise all we got from him was how Iblis was sealed. By the time I finished the 3 main episodes it felt like the story should've just been getting started, but it was really about to end. I was expecting a feature film length adventure, but ended up with a cheap 30 minute episode of Sonic X.

Looking back on how much hope and expectation there was for this catastrophe, both among the fans and in Sega's PR department, it's the perfect end to the era of disillusionment, the fruition of everything begun in Heroes and affirmed in Shadow, the last entry in the trilogy of disappointment and failure. As Elise blew out the flame of hope, so too did hundreds of Sonic fans blow out the candles they'd been holding for the series's return to form. I think the creators were being symbolic when they had all the characters weeping over Sonic's dead body with their world literally coming apart, but resolutely cry out, "No! It's not too late! We can still revive him!" Sadly, though, they couldn't.

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Post by FlashTHD »

As much as I hate what's being done with the series now, I still firmly believe a turnaround's almost always possible. That, and the good games we already have is why i'll stay a fan. But thanks to Next, it's gonna be hard for them to pull it off. Focusing on 4-5 different spinoffs in the span of a year and a half instead of getting the shit wiped up in corporate and R&D ain't helping either. At this point I think what we ought to be looking forward to the most is the eventual death of this miserable Sega-Sammy merger (which ideally could have been Sega-Namco if Sammy's CEO didn't have anger issues). Hopefully that will clear some air so there can be some changes where it counts, but with the damage that's been done to Sonic Team since the merger, and the amount of push they're giving this >>HAI SPEED>> madness...

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Post by Isuka »

Frieza2000 wrote:Increasingly we've seen segments where progress is suspended until you've killed everything in the area to open a door or a box. This and the introduction of enemy health, the designers surely realized, would make shorter levels seem longer and distract players from how monotonous and dull the platforming is.
OK, so this explains why I was getting an average of 5 minutes or so per stage in Sonic Adventure and 15 in Heroes. I certainly feel ashamed for not noticing that the levels' courses were, aside from lame, pretty short and minimal but enemy-riddled.
Frieza2000 wrote:Believe it or not, the high speed sections are my favorite part. I hated them at first, but once you've memorized them it's a treat to finally get a sensation of speed from the game. If they'd been designed better, perhaps modeled more in the vein of the Sonic 3D Blast special stages, and the controls been more usable, this would've been the best idea they've had in years.
Maybe I got the wrong impression, but these Mach Speed sections looked like a severely dysfunctional Burnout rip-off... well, without Sonic violently crashing, exploding in several pieces of scrap and eventually coming to a complete stop when colliding with obstacles and enemies. In fact, they also looked like those short segments of Heroes when each team used a weird "bobsled" vehicle to get through a brief obstacle-course like path before reaching the next portion of the stage.
Frieza2000 wrote:By the time I finished the 3 main episodes it felt like the story should've just been getting started, but it was really about to end. I was expecting a feature film length adventure, but ended up with a cheap 30 minute episode of Sonic X.
So, in addition to being sparse and half-broken, it's short? While playing SA for the first time I got the impression that it was about right. So many cutscenes viewed from different characters' perspectives surely helped to make it look complex and interesting, even though maybe it wasn't, but there was coherence there too, and a general consistency so that it never lost sight of it's objective, it never diverted or distracted the player into something else other than Eggman's current scheme.

And well, this was mandatory:

GHZONERS!

TONIGHT
WE DINE
AT POP'S
!!
Last edited by Isuka on Thu Oct 11, 2007 6:32 pm, edited 3 times in total.

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Post by Frieza2000 »

FlashTHD wrote:As much as I hate what's being done with the series now, I still firmly believe a turnaround's almost always possible.
Anything is possible; I just meant that the hope for a revival within the next decade is no longer quite as rational. For instance, hoping that Sammy is just going to let Sega go, rather than swallowing what's left of them and turning them into a series of Pachinko machines, or be somehow forced to release them is reaching pretty far, whereas last year we had excuses like "Heroes was just a misfired experiment," "Shadow was just a cash in," "It's all SOA," and, "They're not really trying," which can't be used anymore.
Isuka wrote:Maybe I got the wrong impression, but these Mach Speed sections looked like a severely disfunctional-
Yes, they were terrible. The controls in those segments are worse than any other, and unless you've memorized them cheap death abounds, but after 10 minutes of killing robots it was kind of refreshing. What I'd want to see is basically the special stages, but instead of a half pipe suspended over oblivion it could be actual landscapes. These levels needed better guides for what directions you're expected to go in, less trees in the middle of the road, and no <i>randomly</i> flying cars coming at you from <i>behind</i>. Losing all your rings for brushing against walls would have to go too.

On a lighter note, for those of you who can't experience the hilarity or who went through with the Japanese audio, there's a line in Shadow's episode where they included <i>two takes</i>! The actor gets the line wrong, mutters the part he got wrong, then says the line again. THAT'S how unfinished it was!

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Post by FlashTHD »

Frieza2000 wrote:
FlashTHD wrote:As much as I hate what's being done with the series now, I still firmly believe a turnaround's almost always possible.
Anything is possible; I just meant that the hope for a revival within the next decade is no longer quite as rational. For instance, hoping that Sammy is just going to let Sega go, rather than swallowing what's left of them and turning them into a series of Pachinko machines, or be somehow forced to release them is reaching pretty far, whereas last year we had excuses like "Heroes was just a misfired experiment," "Shadow was just a cash in," "It's all SOA," and, "They're not really trying," which can't be used anymore.
You SEEN how much yen they've flushed away every quarter since the merger? As a whole the holdings company's been nothing but a black hole. But SNK got swallowed up...yeah, that's prolly possible too.

Uh, since when was the blame game in SoA's court?

Edit: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/search.php ... &x=45&y=61

Hmm...i'll get back to you when I read through these.

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Post by Frieza2000 »

FlashTHD wrote:Uh, since when was the blame game in SoA's court?
A few people here were saying that since Heroes and Shadow were SoA productions, a good SoJ game was still possible.

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Post by Zeta »

Was 360 not enough to dash their hopes?

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Post by NEG »

Frieza2000 wrote:
FlashTHD wrote:As much as I hate what's being done with the series now, I still firmly believe a turnaround's almost always possible.
Anything is possible; I just meant that the hope for a revival within the next decade is no longer quite as rational. For instance, hoping that Sammy is just going to let Sega go, rather than swallowing what's left of them and turning them into a series of Pachinko machines, or be somehow forced to release them is reaching pretty far, whereas last year we had excuses like "Heroes was just a misfired experiment," "Shadow was just a cash in," "It's all SOA," and, "They're not really trying," which can't be used anymore.
Isuka wrote:Maybe I got the wrong impression, but these Mach Speed sections looked like a severely disfunctional-
Yes, they were terrible. The controls in those segments are worse than any other, and unless you've memorized them cheap death abounds, but after 10 minutes of killing robots it was kind of refreshing. What I'd want to see is basically the special stages, but instead of a half pipe suspended over oblivion it could be actual landscapes. These levels needed better guides for what directions you're expected to go in, less trees in the middle of the road, and no <i>randomly</i> flying cars coming at you from <i>behind</i>. Losing all your rings for brushing against walls would have to go too.

On a lighter note, for those of you who can't experience the hilarity or who went through with the Japanese audio, there's a line in Shadow's episode where they included <i>two takes</i>! The actor gets the line wrong, mutters the part he got wrong, then says the line again. THAT'S how unfinished it was!


::headdesk::

::weep::

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Post by Oompa Star »

I have to say, that is pretty sad.

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Post by Dr. SEGA Monkey »

Frieza2000 wrote: On a lighter note, for those of you who can't experience the hilarity or who went through with the Japanese audio, there's a line in Shadow's episode where they included <i>two takes</i>! The actor gets the line wrong, mutters the part he got wrong, then says the line again. THAT'S how unfinished it was!
Indeed. I THINK it was right after the cutscene where Shadow says "I found the means to seal Mephiles." Then when brought to the Town Stage, a GUN soldier says something like "Shadow, go to....Wave Ocean............................*mutters*..........................Shadow, head to Wave Ocean. E-123 Omega is there." or something like that. I've only seen it once since it's not an actual cutscene and I would have to delete my data to hear it again.

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Post by One Classy Bloke »

I recently had a friend rent Sonic 360 for me (as he gets free rentals).

Christ, nothing really prepares you for how bad that game was. Not even playing early beta versions. The main thing that annoys me (after the loading screens) was the lack of auto saving. Seriously, how could they not include that? I may write an insider's commentary on the game. Might even see if I can interview some of the people I know who worked on it.

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Post by Isuka »

I'm most definitely sure nobody gives a shit about it (I sure don't... oh wait), but there's a few seconds worth of a really shitty interview with Lacey Chabert over at Sonic 06's site...



... which was this one.

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Re: elise does not show tit :(

Post by Neo »

What's a "lacey chabert"?

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